Garfield: Accidentally Relevant
By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 8 Comments
This was today’s Garfield strip:
Jim Davis took to Facebook to claim that he did this strip without checking to see when it would be run, and that it’s purely a terrible coincidence that it ran on November 11. Whether you believe this (don’t comic strip artists normally create their strips with some indication of when they’ll run, just so they’ll get the Christmas strips on the right day?), it’s certainly livened up the reading of Garfield like nothing else since the creation of Garfield Minus Garfield.
I have to say, if it had been an intentional 11-11 strip, I would have considered it tasteless, but I wouldn’t necessarily have seen it as an insult to soldiers or to the day — it would have been more of an argument against glorifying war. Sort of like the classic Paddy Chayefsky movie The Americanization of Emily, where James Garner argues not that wars shouldn’t be fought, but that we shouldn’t talk about violent death as if it’s something to be celebrated. And that view is not entirely at odds with the purpose of Remembrance Day, which is a day of mourning as much as anything. But I guess that would have been too contentious a point for Garfield to make on purpose.
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NFL Picks Week 10: Two minutes of bewildered silence in memory of Wade Phillips
By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 1:45 PM - 4 Comments
Blink. Scrunch up nose. Blink. Blink.
Scott Feschuk Last week: 5-8 Season: 66-58-6
Scott Reid Last week: 7-6 Season: 61-63-6
Let us sum up the last couple weeks of our pigskin prognostication: Never before have two men (term used loosely) made such an awful series of decisions and not ended up in bed with Tara Reid.
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Baltimore (plus 1) at Atlanta, Thursday
Feschuk: It’s the last week of byes, the first week of Thursday night games and yet another week of Ed Reed making opposition quarterbacks poop themselves. (Three interceptions in two games this year; 49 now for his career.) In other news, I was skimming through the CBC website on my daily hunt for news of a Gordon Pinsent-Rita MacNeil sex tape (where are those Canadian content laws when you need them?) when I glimpsed the following headline: “Falcons, Ravens similar yet different.” That’s some good journalisming! These two teams are exactly the same except for being completely opposite. Indeed, the only way you can tell them apart – other than by the fact they’re wholly dissimilar in their identicalness – is that one wears a goatee like evil Spock. Let’s just hope to God that none of these players come into contact with one another during this game or the universe will surely be obliterated, putting an end to existence as we know it and the headaches of my car lease. Pick: Atlanta.
Reid: Matt Ryan is 17-1 in home games. He’s also six-foot-four, Irish as Lucky Charms and has a smile that Continue…
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Out of the hospital and into the museum
By Julia Belluz - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 1 Comment
Will training in fine arts make for better GPs? Medical programs from McMaster to Harvard are betting on it.
In late October, a group of medical residents gathered at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton to scrutinize slides of paintings by Goya and ancient Egyptian statues as they might have examined, earlier that day, X-rays or CT scans. Halfway through the class, an unsettling mess of gray, black and white cubes popped up on the projection screen. “This is a famous work of art,” said instructor Karen Scott Booth, who can rattle off her encyclopedic knowledge at the pace of an auctioneer. “It’s probably one of the most famous works in the history of art. Does anyone know this work?” Silence. “Has anyone seen this before?” Silence. Booth gave her class a hint: “It’s Spanish, by one of the most notable painters of the 20th century.” Still nothing. She continued to prod, urging the doctors to look for clues. Finally, one student ventured: “Picasso?” In the nearly black room, Booth sounded pleased. “Yes, it’s Picasso.”
It was, in fact, Guernica, the artist’s renowned depiction of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. None of the young minds in “The Art of Seeing,” a new visual literacy course for family medicine residents at McMaster, knew it. Until now, many have focused on chemistry and biology, toiling in labs and hospitals. But here they’re asked to look for signs, symbols and stories hidden in pieces of art—which will, the theory goes, enable them to better see signs and symptoms in their patients.
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Today in the tabloids
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 1:33 PM - 15 Comments
Is the Defence Minister preparing to leave politics? Who knows. More important, who is that pretty lady he escorted to the ball last night?
But what really piqued interest Wednesday evening was MacKay’s date, former Miss Canada Nazanin Afshin-Jam.
A self-described singer-songwriter and actress, the Iranian-born Afshin-Jam was the runner-up at the Miss World beauty competition in 2003. She released a debut pop-world beat album called Someday in 2007 … Afshin-Jam and her family fled Tehran for Canada in 1980, in the midst of the Iranian revolution, after her father was tortured. The president and co-founder of the human rights group Stop Child Executions, Afshin-Jam describes herself as a human rights activist and has travelled to Ethiopia to bring awareness to issues affecting young women …
A former Royal Canadian Air Cadet, she got her pilot’s licence when she was 17, speaks four languages, has a degree from the University of British Columbia and has worked for the Red Cross.
The Star provides the requisite photo gallery.
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A new national forest
By Anne Kingston - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments
Creating glorious fresh foliage from an old government manual
Leanne Shapton’s The Native Trees of Canada will likely make forest rangers shake their heads in disbelief. “Why is that basswood leaf turquoise?” they will ask. Or, “What’s with the fuscia alpine lark branch?” Devotees of the New York City-based artist and author’s work, on the other hand, will nod theirs in delight as they peruse the 84 renderings of deciduous and coniferous life in the replica sketchbook. “Why didn’t I notice the papaw’s Fauvist hues before?” they will ask.
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Dick Van Dyke rescued by porpoises
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 12:43 PM - 12 Comments
84-year-old actor had drifted far from shore on a surf board
Actor Dick Van Dyke (The Dick Van Dyke Show) was surfing on his local beach when he fell asleep; when he woke up, he found the board had drifted “out of sight of land,” and the 84 year-old actor wasn’t sure he could get back to shore. But luckily the fins he saw swimming around him turned out not to belong to sharks, but to porpoises, who pushed him back to shore. Proving that if humans haven’t forgiven Van Dyke for his Cockney accent in “Mary Poppins,” the aquatic mammals have.
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Poll: Tories and Liberals deadlocked
By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 12:15 PM - 29 Comments
NDP recorded highest level of support in more than two years
The federal Conservatives and Liberals are deadlocked in the latest EKOS poll. Neither party was able to secure more than 30 per cent support from the Canadian electorate, with 29.4 per cent of respondents saying they would vote for the Tories if an election were held today, while 28.6 per cent saying they would support the Liberals. With 19.3 per cent support, the NDP recorded its highest level of support in more than two years of polling. The survey also suggests that Canadians have a more optimistic view about the long-term implications of their financial situation. Around 28 per cent said that over the next year or so, their short-term personal financial situation would be worse than it is today, compared with 31 per cent who said it would be better. Even better, 45 per cent said their long-term financial outlook would improve, compared to just 20 per cent who said it would be worse.
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‘I think it is the best decision when one looks at the options’
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 12:05 PM - 40 Comments
The Prime Minister confirms a change in his position on the mission in Afghanistan.
“Look, I’m not going to kid you,” he said. “Down deep, my preference would be, would have been, to see a complete end to the military mission. But as we approach that date, the facts on the ground convince me that the Afghan military needs further training. I don’t want to risk the gains that Canadian soldiers have fought for and that they have sacrificed in such significant numbers for by pulling out too early if we can avoid that. I think if we can continue a smaller mission that involves just training, I think frankly that presents minimal risks to Canada but it helps us ensure that the gains we’ve made our continued … to truly ensure that the Afghan forces are able over the next couple of years to take over true responsibility for their security. So I do this with some reluctance but I think it is the best decision when one looks at the options.”
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Will Cristina run again?
By Julia Belluz - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 3 Comments
With her popular husband’s sudden death, the Argentine president’s political future is in doubt
“It’s not the time to talk about candidacies,” proclaimed Argentina’s interior minister just two days after former president Néstor Kirchner died of a heart attack on Oct. 27. But already, with this sudden passing of the country’s most influential politician, the question on everyone’s mind was the political future of the current president: Néstor’s wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The Kirchners have run Argentina since 2003, when Néstor came to power after governing the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz. A tough kid from the provinces, he was credited with stabilizing the country’s broken economy after the 1999-2002 economic and social crisis, when unemployment peaked at 21 per cent. With his program of debt restructuring, he managed to pay back US$9.8 billion to the IMF, and oversaw a period of economic growth. Focusing on accountability, he also overturned amnesty laws that protected military officials who had been accused of human rights violations during the country’s 1976-1983 dictatorship, resulting in a slew of prosecutions.
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Mitchel Raphael on moustaches—and MPs worth a Halloween visit
By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments
Scott Brison’s lonely night
Two of Glen Pearson’s adopted children arrived from Sudan three years ago, knowing nothing about Halloween. After explaining the concept, the Liberal MP woke up on his kids’ first Halloween in Canada to find them in costume, all set to trick or treat. When he broke the news that they’d have to wait until dark, “They both burst into tears because they thought they got to go out all day to people’s houses and get candy.” They felt better that night, once they had sacks of treats. “It was something they never dreamed of as possible,” says the MP. Now, Pearson’s Halloween tradition is to stay home handing out treats while his kids hit the streets. Newfoundland Liberal MP Siobhan Coady has fine-tuned her Halloween handouts. “My sister is allergic to nuts so I always make sure I have a nut-free option. I also give out chips, chocolate, and Play-Doh. It’s a little surprise.” Minister for International Co-operation Bev Oda, when at home for Halloween, knows all six kids who come to her door in the sparsely populated area. Her tradition is to give them presents, including MP3 players and video games. Halloween is a lonely time for Liberal MP Scott Brison and spouse Maxime Saint-Pierre. “There are three houses on our road,” he says. “We own two, and the other belongs to my 90-year-old aunt Margie [Faulkner].” They keep candy on hand just in case, but no one ever knocks. “It kinda reminds me of my fifth birthday party,” says Brison. “My mother had this great party. Nobody showed.” -
"Mafia Godfather" killed in Montreal
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 11:12 AM - 8 Comments
Believed to have been shot by an assassin hiding on his property
Nicolo Rizzuto Sr., widely regarded by police to be the Godfather of Canada’s Mafia, was shot dead in his Montreal home Wednesday. It’s the latest in a string of murders over the last 15 months that have included the assassination of Rizzuto’s grandson, Nick Jr., and the man expected to become the next head of the Sicilian clan, Agostino Cuntrera. Police say the 86-year-old was looking out his window toward a wooded area in his backyard when a hidden gunman fired the fatal shot. The street where Rizzuto lived, Antoine Berthelet Ave., is often called “Mafia Row,” and is also home to Rizzuto’s son Vito, currently in a U.S. prison, and his son-in-law Paolo Renda, who is thought to have been kidnapped from the same area earlier this year. “He’s 86 years old. You figure he’s out of the situation,” one of Rizzuto’s neighbours, who asked not to be identified, told the CBC. “I don’t know why they’ve gone to the extent of going after the old fella.”
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Canada to stay in Afghanistan in non-combat role
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 11:08 AM - 12 Comments
Troops will train Afghans until 2014
On Remembrance Day, Canada’s military families have learned their sons and daughters may not be safe at home in 2011 as expected. Although Canada’s combat role in Afghanistan will end in 2011, Stephen Harper has confirmed Canadian soldiers will stay in the country until 2014 to train local soldiers. “I do this with some reluctance, but I think it is the best decision when one looks at the options,” Harper told reporters at a press conference before the opening of the G20 summit in Seoul, South Korea. “I don’t want to risk the gains that Canadian soldiers have fought for and they have sacrificed for in such significant numbers for by pulling out too early if we can avoid that.” He added that he believes there are “minimal risks” involved with this type of training mission. Both the U.S. and Britain have urged Canada to stay on in a combat role, but Harper has refused. “I’ve been very clear, that’s not an option Canada will consider,” the Prime Minister said.
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Lest we forget
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 11:05 AM - 1 Comment
Remembrance Day messages from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Defence Minister Peter MacKay, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe.
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Deliberately Inaccurate Parodies
By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 11:03 AM - 7 Comments
I’m not going to comment on Conan at any length for a while (I’ll probably come back to it in a few weeks, pick a random episode, and see what he’s doing differently, if anything), but I did want to say one thing about a bit last night, where O’Brien brought on SNL’s Will Forte playing TBS’s founder, Ted Turner. It’s normal for a talk show to have parodies of famous people. The thing about Forte’s Turner, though, is that it was absolutely nothing like Ted Turner at all. Instead it was a fantasy version of Turner, taking one or two things that are known about the guy (he’s rich, he’s Southern) and building a stock character, the macho rich Southern guy, out of that. It’s not like an SNL celebrity parody, where the usual m.o. is to find some trait the public associates with the famous person and then exaggerate it; Chevy Chase’s Gerald Ford was nothing like Gerald Ford, but he was based on the public perception of Ford as a clumsy guy. But Turner’s public persona is that of the liberal rich guy who wants to use his money to save the planet, and Forte played him as Yosemite Sam.
This is a deliberate choice, though; it’s not like O’Brien’s writers and Forte don’t know what Turner acts like. The trope™ being used here is a common one, particularly beloved of the Harvard Lampoon/Simpsons generation O’Brien belongs to: the parody that is intentionally inaccurate. One modern classic example is from The Simpsons after O’Brien left, when the showrunners (two other Harvard Lampoon guys, Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein) decided to do an episode about George H.W. Bush moving to Springfield, but told the writer that they didn’t want it to be satire, they didn’t want it to be political, and they didn’t even want the portrayal of Bush to have that much to do with the real guy. Instead Bush was portrayed half as a generic crusty old guy and half as Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace. The joke was that there was a famous person being parodied and no actual parody was taking place — it’s a joke on our expectations as well as sort of a revolt against topical/satirical humour.
Update: As pointed out by two readers, the New York Times just had an article on another version of this concept. The Onion has been doing a series of parodies of Joe Biden that are not merely different from Biden’s public persona, but the exact opposite. Since Biden has been around for so long and his actual “foibles” are so well-known, there’s not that much to make fun of. But if you create a different character and call him “Joe Biden,” then you have an endless array of new Joe Biden jokes, as well as a running in-joke about the difference between the real guy and the parody. The article even quotes a Saturday Night Live writer to represent the traditional position, that a celebrity parody should actually have some connection to its subject, if only because the audience will either think a) That this is really bad satire or b) That the fantasy version of the celebrity is actually supposed to be real. But the Onion writers disagree; the head video writer tells the Times that people “kept trying to peg [Biden] as a buffoon. We just abandoned that and put him in silly uniforms and had him opening a crab shack.” When you abandon satire, you have more freedom to come up with jokes because you’re not tethered to reality.
So with the Forte version of Turner, and other celebrities who are inaccurately parodied by O’Brien’s writers, the joke is actually supposed to be that he’s playing a generic redneck billionaire instead of Ted Turner. I guess you could view it as a meta-joke about lazy comedy writing (as in, there are certain characteristics associated with rich Southern guys that we comedy writers use every time, whether they make sense or not), but mostly I think it’s just a way of avoiding politics and satire and the other stuff that some comedy writers aren’t that fond of — certainly O’Brien isn’t big on satire and topical humour, which is why his celebrity parodies often veer into fantasy. Instead you create a setup where we would normally expect some satire, and confound the expectations by just being silly.
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Federal government unprepared for influx of wounded soldiers
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 10:51 AM - 6 Comments
Veterans Affairs minister admits his department is scrambling to meet demand
Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn has admitted that his department wasn’t prepared for the large numbers of wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan and is now scrambling to meet their new demands. The department was born to meet the needs of veterans from previous conflicts, he said, and was ill-equipped for the influx of soldiers suffering the scars of Canada’s current war. “This department was functioning with traditional veterans. With the Afghanistan situation, this department was not ready,” Blackburn said. “Now we are doing those changes to be sure that our new modern veteran will obtain all the services that they should obtain.” As such, Blackburn says he will introduce a “second chapter” to the charter as early as next week, which includes a package of improvements meant to address these complaints. The changes will include guaranteeing financial support for wounded veterans during their rehabilitation. For example, all wounded veterans will now be guaranteed a minimum annual income of about $40,000, instead of 75 per cent of their salary. More veterans will also be allowed to tap into a permanent monthly allowance for seriously wounded veterans, worth between $536 and $1,609. More than 3,500 veterans are expected to be eligible for this allowance over the next five years. These changes mean that most seriously wounded soldiers in Afghanistan will be guaranteed a minimum yearly income of $58,000.
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Myanmar rejects final appeal by Aung San Suu Kyi
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 10:46 AM - 1 Comment
Activist’s house arrest to end on Saturday, as scheduled
Myanmar (formerly Burma) has rejected the final, largely symbolic, appeal of Aung San Suu Kyi, whose one-year house arrest sentence was set to end Saturday. The 65-year-old pro-democracy leader was convicted of violating national security after an American man showed up at her home and she allowed him to stay over. The man told her that God had sent him to warn her of an assassination plot. Myanmar’s junta made it illegal for Suu Kyi to have foreign visitors and she has been under close watch ever since she won a landslide victory in 1990, which the military refused recognize. In 1991, Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize for bravely insisting on democracy. With Suu Kyi safely locked up last week, Myanmar held its first election since 1990. Suu Kyi’s party refused to participate. According to officials, the army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won 80 per cent of the vote.
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Pulling out the Playbook
By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 10:40 AM - 5 Comments
RIM has finally unveiled a working demo of its rival to the iPad—the BlackBerry Playbook
Research In Motion has been locked in a bitter battle with tech rivals like Apple, but lately it seems shareholders couldn’t be happier. The company, which has been losing ground in the battle over smartphones, finally unveiled a working demo of its rival to the iPad—the BlackBerry Playbook—last Tuesday. Company co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis debuted the seven-inch, multi-touch tablet at the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles, showcasing its integrated camera for video conferencing, high-definition screen and full Flash support—all features the iPad has been criticized for lacking.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has dismissed the Playbook as being “too small,” but RIM shareholders seem to disagree. The device, which hits store shelves as early as next March and is marketed as the world’s first “professional” tablet, drove RIM stock up 5.8 per cent on Tuesday and 10 per cent overall last week.
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Stem cells repair muscle damage in mice
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 10:38 AM - 0 Comments
Muscles grow back twice as big, retain their strength
Injured mice injected with stem cells saw their muscles grow back twice as big in just days, with the mice staying big and strong the rest of their lives, U.S. researchers are reporting. This might lead to new treatments for diseases in humans that cause muscle to deteriorate, and maybe even to halt the erosion of muscle strength that comes with age. In the experiment, the team looked at young mice with leg injuries and injected them with muscle stem cells from young donor mice. The cells repaired the injury, and caused treated muscle to increase in size by 170 per cent.
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U.S. introduces new warning labels on cigarettes
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 10:37 AM - 3 Comments
One shows a toe tag on a corpse; in another, a mother blows smoke on a baby
Federal drug regulators in the U.S. have unveiled 36 proposed warning labels to appear on cigarette packages. They’re designed to cover half the surface area of a pack or carton of cigarettes, as well as one-fifth of any advertisements for the product, the New York Times reports. Aimed to get smokers to quit, one shows a toe tag on a corpse; another shows a mom blowing smoke over her baby. These labels are required after a law passed last year gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate, not ban, tobacco products. Some cigarette manufacturers have said they’ll fight the labels in court since they infringe on their property and free speech rights. The U.S. was the first company to require health warnings on tobacco products, but 39 other countries now require large, graphic depictions. Meanwhile, Health Canada recently backed off a plan to introduce even more graphic warnings, a decision opposed by the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
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The look of leadership
By Kate Lunau - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 4 Comments
Law firms led by managing partners whose faces look “powerful” actually make more money
Dressing for success has always made good business sense. But having the right face for it seems to be important, too: law firms led by managing partners whose faces look “powerful” actually make more money, according to a new study. And it seems like it’s not something that can be faked. By looking at old yearbook photos, researchers found that successful managing partners had powerful-looking faces as far back as their college years, before they even began their careers.
The University of Toronto’s Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University asked people to judge photos of 73 managing partners (four of them women) from The American Lawyer’s top 100 firms, judging them on dominance, maturity, attractiveness, likeability and trustworthiness. They did the same with college yearbook photos, taken 33 years earlier on average, to see how much had changed.
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Smoke shacks and a waterslide
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 1 Comment
Who’s suing whom
Nova Scotia: A 33-year-old man is suing a pub in Dartmouth, alleging that early one morning last May he was left “highly intoxicated” after being “over-served alcohol.” He claims that the bar is liable for the resulting car accident and injuries he sustained as a result of driving drunk. A bartender at the pub denied the charge.
Ontario: Tobacco farmers in Ontario have launched a $500-million class-action lawsuit in federal court against Ottawa for failing to collect taxes from illegal smoke shacks. The suit alleges that Ottawa ignored “flagrant violations” of the prohibition on the sale of black-market tobacco.Manitoba: A Winnipeg man is suing a North Dakota hotel for damages, alleging to have suffered head and neck injuries because an attendant was not in place on the receiving end of a waterslide. The man is seeking $194,000 for medical bills and other economic losses, and at least $75,000 for personal injuries. Lawyers for the hotel say the lawsuit has no merit and asked that it be dismissed.
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Great expectations
By Julia Belluz - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 1 Comment
After three years of searching, investor Warren Buffett may have finally found a worthy heir
Since Todd Combs, a little-known fund manager from Florida, emerged last week as the likely heir to take over legendary investor Warren Buffett’s US$100-billion portfolio, tales of his prodigious hard work have been trickling out. A spokeswoman for the State College of Florida said Combs was earning credits at the community college when he was only 16 and still in high school. “Definitely a good indication of his ability at an early age,” she told Florida’s Herald-Tribune.
Former colleagues said the 39-year-old is a meticulous researcher, who takes a very detailed and analytical approach to his work, spending hours a day studying newspapers and obscure financial documents. Like his new Berkshire Hathaway contemporaries, he’s low key; after the announcement that he had joined Berkshire, the media couldn’t find a photo of him anywhere on the Internet. His own firm, Castle Point Capital Management LLC, doesn’t have a website. Even in dress, he opts for khakis and button-down shirts over flashy suits.
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Representing the new guy
By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 2 Comments
Tarek Al-Khatib, a Swedish immigrant, has formed a political party to represent immigrants’ interests
In reaction to the success of the Sweden Democrats, a far-right populist political party that in last month’s federal election won 20 seats in the 349-member parliament, Tarek Al-Khatib, a Swedish immigrant, has formed a political party to represent immigrants’ interests. Known as the Svartskalledmokraterna, or the “Wog Democrats,” the party’s aim is to challenge the Sweden Democrats’ anti-immigrant and anti-Islam platform. “We have to defend ourselves through greater political activity,” Al-Khatib told the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, adding that Sweden’s shift to the right sends a “clear warning signal” to immigrants in the Nordic country.
That Sweden needs a political party that supports foreigners’ interests may be an understatement. In recent weeks, the country has seen a rash of shootings against foreigners in Malmö, the third largest city, where almost half the population are immigrants. They were the latest in a string of shootings over the past year in Malmö: 16 in total, resulting in numerous injuries and the death of one woman. Given the atmosphere of fear, the Wog Democrats appear to be gaining momentum: since its recent inception this month, the party says more than 1,000 people have expressed interest.
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How to spot a prostitute
By Julia Belluz - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 10 Comments
Local police have ordered women, who troll a local highway for work, to put on the high-visibility clothing
Street prostitutes working near the Catalan city of Lleida now share a uniform: fluorescent yellow vests. Local police have ordered the women, who troll a local highway for work, to put on the high-visibility clothing in order to prevent road accidents. Anyone who opts out of the brightly coloured bib faces a $57 fine by the Mossos d’Esquadra, the regional police.
A spokesman for the force emphasized that officers were not singling the women out; prostitution in Spain is legal in most cities (though pimping is not). Instead, this crackdown is in accordance with a 2004 law, which stipulates that anyone on a highway, including those with broken-down cars, must wear a fluorescent bib.
Most women have incorporated the sleeveless jackets into their previous uniform of short skirts, tall boots, and revealing tops. The police say that if they continue to abide by the law, the women have no other reason to face fines. After all, the road they work falls just outside the boundaries of Lleida, one city that recently banned street prostitution.
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Bestsellers
By Brian Bethune - Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of November 8th, 2010)
Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of November 8th, 2010)
Fiction
1 ROOM
by Emma Donoghue2 (10) 2 FREEDOM
by Jonathan Franzen5 (11) 3 OUR KIND OF TRAITOR
by John le Carré1 (4) 4 TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT
by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson(1) 5 ANNABEL
by Kathleen Winter6 (4) 6 THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS’ NEST
by Stieg Larsson9 (25) 7 FALL OF GIANTS
by Ken Follett3 (6) 8 ZERO HISTORY
by William Gibson4 (2) 9 SANCTUARY LINE
by Jane Urquhart(1) 10 NEMESIS
by Philip Roth10 (4) Non-fiction
1 LIFE
by Keith Richards2 (2) 2 THEY FIGHT LIKE SOLDIERS, THEY DIE LIKE CHILDREN
by Roméo Dallaire5 (2) 3 AT HOME
by Bill Bryson1 (4) 4 CHANGING MY MIND
by Margaret Trudeau3 (4) 5 HARPERLAND
by Lawrence Martin9 (5) 6 GOLD DIGGERS
by Charlotte Gray8 (7) 7 DEATH OF THE LIBERAL CLASS
by Chris Hedges(1) 8 MORDECAI
by Charles Foran4 (3) 9 THE TIGER
by John Vaillant6 (11) 10 FAB
by Howard Sounes(1) LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)


























